John and Kate Plus Hate

For the record, I normally have a profound lack of interest in anything having to do with either celebrities or reality television (two categories that should probably be mutually exclusive but somehow are not), but I am finding myself sucked into the John and Kate drama. Why is that?

We watched the first couple of seasons, not religiously or in order, but here and there because reruns would be on at night while I was getting Genevieve to sleep in our bed. SAM and I used to tease BD about having a little thing for Kate, at least until he saw the belly surgery episode. We would shake our heads and say "Poor John" when Kate would treat him like her ninth child, and wish for a van like theirs so our crew of nine could someday travel in one vehicle. But then we lost interest, because really, it was never that interesting in the first place.

I've seen whole websites transformed by swarms of loyal J&K fans coming to duke it out with J&K haters on the basis of one editorial. There's a thread of comments over thirteen thousand posts long on a parenting site I frequent. It's nuts! And truly, I would never dedicate that much emotional energy to loving or hating people I don't even know. But I have to admit, I'm not sorry to see Kate getting her comeuppance.

Maybe it's that I find it harmfully dishonest to present such a shiny-happy false facade to the world, in which one woman pretends to (almost) singlehandedly keep her eight children clean, clothed, and fed an all-organic diet in an immaculate house with a perfectly-organized laundry room while maintaining individualized relationships with each child and having a hot date with the hubby on a regular basis. Girl, please. Who are you fooling, and why would you want to?

Here's something I've learned: if you make yourself look too much better than everyone else, they will take the very earliest opportunity to crucify your uppity butt. But if you make people feel like they are not doing so badly after all, they might just love you. Maybe if Kate hadn't been so busy allegedly elbowing people out of her way on the path to fame and fortune, someone would have told her that.